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Wednesday, 4 August 2010

Codex writers powered by hamsters

I have quite a large Daemon Hunters army and this made me ask the question why do GW take so long to get round to updating old codices?

A case in point is the new Blood Angels codex. For 10 years the Blood Angels were the ginger step child of the marine chapters. Before the current codex we had the pdf version (*shudders*), which basically gave us an army who's best weapon options were just as likely to blow themselves up as the enemy.

Before this abomination we had a 26 page add on for codex space marines which had no real personality. Yet before this we had codex angels of death (yes it was a BA DA combi dex) this actually gave us a proper look at who and what the Blood Angels are. (I know I'm rambling a bit but it will make sense I promise.)

Now back to the Daemon Hunters they have been left out in the cold since 3rd edition (which is nearly 10 years ago now).

We'll start by looking at the Inqusitors. An Inquisitor Lord is little more than an Imperial guard soldier in power armour, for 45 point I would expect something a little better to be honest. OK so they aren't supposed to be space marines but in the newer codexs there are a lot of troops who could take these guys down in cc without breaking a sweat. The only way to improve these guys is to spend a stupid ammount of points on a retinue and wargear. Inquisitor Lords have to take a retinue which stops you from being able to use some of their psychic powers on more important units.

The Inquisitors in the Elites section are marginally better only because they are only 20 points, all you lose is 1 attack, 1 wound and a 2 point drop in leadership. Plus you don't have to put them with a retinue so you can actually use these guys as a power buff unit.

Now the psychic powers these guys can take are either brilliant or absolute garbage depending on who you are facing. If you are up against chaos they may come in handy but against any other army your going to find them next to useless. Especially when you can give them wargear that'll do the job better and for less.

On wargear there are a couple of items which are actually still really good when facing chaos armies, but again they aren't going to help you against any of the newer mech lists out there. One of these stand out items is the grimoire of true names, this halves any daemon WS (rounding down) when you face them in cc. Greater daemons and Daemon princes look out Daemon Hunters can still mess with your heads.

Now lets move on to the Grey Knights. The elite daemon hunting space marine chapter who don't have access to any for of line transport (WTF!! Mech rules 5th so anything that can't field armour is stuffed). If your brave (or stupid like me) enough to field a pure Grey Knights army your going to be stuck for mobility.

You would have thought that somebody would have thought about giving Grey Knights access to a rhino or two, but no. The only transport you can take for them is the Land raider. Combine this with how expensive a squad of Grey Knights is, and your looking at a maximum of two squads with transports and a HQ unit in a 1500 point force (thats going to make a space marine army look like a horde army, and your going to be in serious trouble against Orks or IG).

Not to mention the complete lack of heavy weapons. That's right folks Grey Knights have nothing man portable over strength 5, and if you want something a bit stronger you're going to have to take either a Dreadnought or a Land Raider. But these are big targets for your opponent that will attract a lot of fire power and once they are gone all of your opponents mech units are going to be running wild all over you.

Now if like me you have the book and not the pdf codex you can still field allies, but if you take space marines as allies you can't field Grey Knights, oh and you can only use vanilla marines (*yawn*). Or you can take IG.

But this defeats the point of having a Daemon Hunters army if you have to rape another codex to build a usable list.

So we get back to the starting point why does it take GW so long to fix out of date codices? Yes we all love marines but what about the rest of the Imperium's forces, especially those with such a massive potential as Daemon Hunters or Witch hunters. It doesn't stop there though you've got Tau, a shooty army in a game where cc has taken over. Necrons who seem to have gone back to sleep and Dark Eldar who are too busy pleasuring themselves in the back of the store to fight.

There seems to be a long list of these forgotten armies who seem to have been left behind since dawn of war introduced space marines to the mass market. Now I'm not putting the blame on this fine game but since it's release there seems to have been a marked drop in the numbers of non space marine armies being used (by noob players anyway).

Come on GW wake up and start giving us something other than space marine armies and bring back the more vaied and interesting/unorthodox armies we all loved to see roaming the tables of your stores. We want individual armies with character not mass produced, everybody has the same units forces we see all too often these days.

I know everybody who reads this is going to think that I should stop complaining because I play Blood Angels, but I would like to have the opportunity to use my Daemon Hunters without the certain knowledge that I am going to get ass stomped in the first turn every time I play.

Join with me and help GW see that we miss those individual armies and want them to come back to the table soon.

The new BA codex still lacks some of the personality of Angels of Death though. It just seems as though the codex writers have given up on giving us detailed background and would rather just fill the pages the pictures of the models.

It's bad enough White Dwarf has turned into the GW monthly catalogue update, it would seems the codices are going the same way.